Job Interview

I just had an interview for a job with ExxonMobil. A couple years ago I would have felt dirty because of that, but these days it doesn't really bother me. Not that I'm looking to work in the oil industry as opposed to working as a professor, or getting a job with the USGS or NOAA or something, but here's why some of the things that might have bothered me before don't now.

1) People hate the oil industry and, by extension, its employees. Its interesting that not liking oil companies dates back pretty much to the beginning of the industry itself. These are huge corporations that make unimaginable amounts of money, and as "Reezy" Freeman puts it "people hate on you when you shinin'." Recently a lot of that hate is over high gas prices, which I find ridiculous. Oil and gas are commodities whose prices reflect demand. We as Americans have chosen to live in a way that demands enormous amounts of these products and now more and more of the world is following suit. The response of oil prices to the recent instability in global markets shows that speculation certainly plays a role in these costs, but putting that aside I heard recently that glodal oil demand was 89 million barrels a day, while production was 86 million barrels a day. Naturally, prices will rise to the point that it discourages the world from using 3 million barrels of oil a day. Unfortunately, there is so much inertia in the system regarding our consumption of oil (for example: homeowners can't decide on a weekly or monthly or even yearly basis to suddenly not live in the suburbs and commute 25 miles each way to work every day. They're stuck with a house in a crappy location for some time and can't just stop driving to work every day. Not to mention that the house itself is probably bigger than they need and thus consumes excess energy.) that it takes a substantial increase in the price of oil to change consumption patterns. Over time prices will come down as people make decisions that allow them to conserve, but at the moment it looks like it costs $68 a barrel to cut consumption by 3 million barrels a day and $68 a barrel is equal to $1.62 a gallon. The last gas station I saw was selling gasoline for about a dollar a gallon more than this, which reflects the total cost of refining the petroleum and transporting it to the station. So the prices make sense. And for the people who say "yeah, but what about when gas was almost $4 a gallon," that was when oil was trading for almost $150 a barrel, or about $3.50 a gallon. So gas was actually being sold for a price much closer to the cost of the raw material then than it is now.

Whew! That was a mouthful. I'll finish this point and get onto the rest of my reasons at some other time.

Worries

Maybe I haven't been keeping myself busy enough lately, or jogging enough to wear myself out (or drinking enough to quiet my mind), but I've been doing a lot of worrying about the future. I know that climate change is real (note word choice: know vs. believe), but don't really know how it might affect my life. I think the election this fall could have huge effects on our country for years to come, but haven't taken the time to educate myself nearly enough about what any of the candidates will actually try to accomplish (and anyway, I'm not entirely convinced that the American political system is capable of anything except helping people make money). I'm worried about peak oil. What will we do when we can't pump as much oil out of the ground as the world needs run the way we've been running? How will the world grow enough food without fertilizers which are derived from fossil fuels? Is this going to be a good time for oil companies (and their employees) as prices go up, or a bad time as supplies go down? Could the loss of a single resource actually be enough to change the way the whole world works? Will people actually do anything before its too late?

Combine these with the more mundane, or at least more personal, questions I have - when will I graduate? what will I do after grad school? what problems might arise when I move 4,000 miles to Alaska in the dead of winter and only know one person within 2,000 miles plus my job is still in Boston? - and its enough to keep me up at night.

Strangely, its not enough to get me out of bed in the morning, though...